The Watch on the Heath: Science and Religion before Darwin

Galileo once wrote that ‘the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, but not how the heavens go’. From the Greeks to the present day, thoughtful people have struggled to reconcile the discoveries of science with religious belief and authority.In the age before Darwin many powerful clerics were also notable scientific scholars and leading scientists were often at least conventionally pious. Observing life ever more closely, an extraordinary generation of English geologists, fossil hunters and naturalists were compelled to accept that their planet was older, more complicated, diverse and cruel than they had previously imagined. Questions about God and the Bible inevitably began…